When parents define “educational” media, SpongeBob sinks

Any self-respecting skeptic has to be careful with the word educational, according to the Joan Ganz Conney Center blog. Thousands of games in the iTunes App Store describe themselves as “educational,” but are they? On TV, preschool shows declare that it’s “learning time,” but is it? Given the marketing hype, it can be pretty hard to write about an educational anything without using quotation marks. New survey results released Friday don’t necessarily solve the problem, but they do take the marketers out of it. Instead, parents are in charge of the labeling. The survey, Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America, asked more than 1,500 parents of children 2 to 10 years old to disclose details about digital media and TV use in their households…